Dr. M. Louise McBee

Title IX

Transcript from "Title IX"

During that time period from ‘69 to ‘73, and you mentioned I think Title IX earlier. The Title IX legislation was passed, and I think people look at it with an emphasis on the athletic part, but it was across the board with any activity that the students…

Right. You could not spend more money and have more teams for example, more men's teams than you could have women's teams. The only thing we had then that I recall was basketball. To any great extent they did a lot of traveling and then women's basketball…I remember when Liz Murphy was made director of that, they had to sell cookies and drive their own cars and so on, and Title IX changed all that, and there was a great amount of unrest about that. People didn't want that change. They thought the girls didn't need to play those kind of sports at that level, that it was interfering with things that people enjoyed for the men. I was the chair of the Title IX committee on the campus, and we had students and faculty on it, and put it in line with the Federal regulations, but it took a while to implement it, although it was passed in '72,I believe. It took several years and as late as the year before last, we put in the…what do you call it when you ride the horses…?

Equestrian.

The Equestrian program was put in for women, so that we would have a balance with the number of men's organizations and women's organizations. Is it the same now? No, probably not, but it is a lot better than it was, and if you want to find out the interest in women's activities, go to gymnastics.

Second most.

It is the highest attendance except football. And uh if you look at the record of the women's sports you see there were more awards that have been won by the women than by the men.

Going on right this weekend…

Going on this weekend with women's basketball team and, of course, our swimming team, and our women's basketball team has gone to the Final Four several times and go to the NCAA tournament just about every year, and the men have been what, once, so the women are doing very well.